Re: [Gusdev-gusdev] how finite are primary keys?

[Pjm <pj...@sa...>]

steve fischer wrote:
> jonathan-
> 
> i few people have recently asked me a question that you can best answer.
> 
> what if any is the limit to the size of primary keys?
> 
> this question comes out of the observation that we are burning through 
> primary keys when we test in non-commit mode.
> 
> i have been assuming that the limit is large enough that we don't need 
> to worry about exhausting them.
> 
> steve

Steve,

I asked one of our DBAs (Andy) and he replied with;

"It's limited by the datatype of the column it's on which, in the case of
GUS, is NUMBER(10) typically.  So, it will reach 9,999,999,999 and then
fall over.  The GO schema tables look similar.  In GUS I can see an
occasional composite primary key where one of the columns is NUMBER(6)
(eg. AASEQUENCEKEYWORDVER), so the limit would be six digits in that case."

Hope that helps.

Paul.